No more painted pen tubes for me!

[Firefyter-emt]

I got a chance to really try out my new powder coat gun today. It took me two tried and a combined four coats to do the white (Harbor Fright powder) and the black tubes took just one coat of black (Eastwoods powder) The process is simple enough and clean up is a freaking breeze!! (I come from an auto painter background, so cleanup with a blow gun is awesome!)

This is the first batch of cigar tubes that will be hand painted by a friend and then clear cast. The black is the cap tubes and will not be painted, the black cap looks awesome on a cigar kit. Look up the "daylilly pen" that Steve had wrapped a photo lable onto. These will be much the same, but hand painted.

 

[stevers]

Cant wait to see them Lee. Especially those black top tubes.

 

[johncrane]

l agree can't wait

 

[Rmartin]

Sweet!

Rmartin

 

[LEAP]

looking good,

 

[les-smith]

Nice. Put me at the top of the list for when you start selling them.

 

[Randy_]

Four coats of powder strikes me as being pretty thick? Are you going to have to drill bigger than recommended holes in your blanks to achieve a proper fit?

 

[LEAP]

Randy, I think he's going to have them hand painted then cast them in resin.

 

[Randy_]

Phil: I did read that in the original post; but it got away from me when I posted.[B)]

 

[Firefyter-emt]

Randy, the white tubes have just 2 coats on them. The first try (my first ever coating) there were spots that were see-thru. I sanded them and tried to recoat but it was lumpy. I put them between center on my lathe and turned the coating off (80 grit would not do it!)

I recoated them and after a baking they were again too thin so I used the "hot re-coat" method and applied a second coat which worked perfect. The black came out perfect in the very first try so I chock it up to the cheap powder.

But yes, the white tubes will be hand painted, in fact I dropped off the 3 tubes today so "my artist" can paint on them. These blanks I told her to just play with and make one of them for herself and I will cast them in batch two. The first batch will be the black caps because I have little to loose if they fail.

I just dropped another hundred at AZ so I will have more tubes later thuis week so I will measure the thickness on the coated ones. It does look and feel very thin, but hard as nails.